St Mark’s has a dedicated Environment group, established in 2002 following a Lent course on Creation Care.

Our aims are :

We aim to raise awareness in the church of the unprecedented impacts of climate change for God’s Earth and for our global and generational neighbours. We are seeking ways that the church, and individual members of the congregation, can seek to live out our faith in a way that counters this injustice and so bring about God’s Kingdom on and for the earth. This can be through prayer, practice and political engagement.

What does loving Jesus have to do with the Environment?
God declared creation good before we humans even entered the scene. The earth is so important to God that his very first commandment to us included taking care of the earth and animals.

Jesus said “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

Our neighbours include the people who live downstream from our water pollution, downwind from our air pollution, and downhill from our soil erosion. Our neighbours are those who not only live next door to us or in the next street or city but who live on the far side of the planet. They are those are affected by our use of carbon rich fuels, the way we recycle or don’t. Our neighbours also include our descendants and the descendants of our neighbours.

The good news is that we can all make a difference by making  small changes in our lifestyle if we just take a bit of extra time to think about what we are doing and see it as part of our mission for Jesus.

The Anglican Church’s fifth mark of mission is to to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth so how do we do that?